How to Take Screenshots in OS X

The print screen key — you never know you’ll miss it until it’s gone. Apple dispensed with the key entirely, opting for a key combination instead for capturing screenshots. As a result, new Mac users will likely become confused when they try to capture an image of their screen. Thankfully, Apple offers numerous, easy-to-remember keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots.

1. Pressing Command-Shift-3 takes a screenshot of the entire screen and saves it on the desktop.

2. Pressing Command-Shift-4, then selecting an area of the screen, takes a screenshot of the selected area and saves it on the desktop.

3. Pressing Command-Shift-4, then Space Bar, then clicking on a window takes a screenshot of that window and saves it to the desktop.

Here’s a great bonus tip. Adding Control to all of the above methods saves the screenshot to the clipboard rather than the desktop.